Ten reasons why DITA and Agile are made for each other

DITA’s topic-based approach to enable content reuse complements the principles of Agile methodologies. And that’s by far not the only reason why the two principles make a perfect match.

Text by Keith Schengili-Roberts

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Ten reasons why DITA and Agile are made for each other

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Both the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) and Agile were born out of necessity for software development teams. Technical writers within the software division at IBM established DITA in order to efficiently create effective and collaboratively written topic-based documentation. Similarly, the Agile Manifesto came from a group of software developers seeking a more lightweight way to create their deliverables. In just over ten years of existence, DITA has seen the highest adoption rates within software development – the same industry in which Agile has had the largest uptake.

Agile software development makes specific demands on documentation teams, whose technical writers are required to be nimble, describe features in a piecemeal fashion, and report on their progress. The structure of DITA is ideally suited to these needs. Though originally created for different reasons, DITA ...